I see this as the calm before the storm as winter hasn't even hit yet and we are already seeing 10 hours of outages over the course of a 24 hour period. Some of us are anyway as not all is equal in the sharing stats as Johannesburg is being hit harder than most.
The only guarantee we have is this is not going to end well as it never does. The problem lies within the infrastructure itself as it is not coping with the constant on and off status resulting in over 2000 extra outages across the region daily. Some of these are quick fixes and others can take days so always fear the worst and hope for the best by being prepared.
What doesn't boost me with confidence is the latest news from SASRIA which is South Africa State Risk Insurance for covering damage caused due to rioting as a result of power outages. They are possibly predicting the future as surely this is on the cards this winter.
My family has been in Durban this week and what was interesting to note is what they are experiencing is a mild inconvenience compared to the rest of the country. They are exempt from proper load shedding due to the floods last year and why the rest of the country takes up the slack.
Not so funny when you hear factories relocating to the Durban region due to knowing you will be less affected but that is a reality. We shut down our Durban facility due to power outages so only can imagine how bad it would have been in Johannesburg. This will change however as businesses who move will feel the pain soon enough as this cannot go on as is. The entire grid could collapse and why the State Insurance entity made that announcement.
Last year we thought was bad but already we are about to surpass last years lost power outages by this weekend and we are still in May. The 2023 bar chart is definitely going to break all existing records and have a negative impact on the power grid as there is no ways it can be managed safely.
The public is being told we are on stage 6 which is a blatant lie as we are on stage 10. The industrial sector which is an area they have recently tried to protect is currently on 4 hours outages per day with residential being hit the hardest.
What does this winter hold for the country as knowing we are already on stage 10 which will then become stage 12 with a 50% loss of power daily. Supplies in the stores will start to dry up as already we have noticed a lack of certain manufactured food products. Escalating prices over and above "inflation" as this is going to be a rough ride with no end in sight.
